Various medications may be provided to a patient via infusion, facilitated by an infusion pump such as a peristaltic pump. Peristaltic pumps typically operate by directly manipulating an administration set through which the medication is delivered. Over time, the manipulation causes a physical degradation of the administration set in the area manipulated by the infusion pump. That is, prolonged physical manipulation of the administration set by the peristaltic pump causes a reduction in springback or flexibility of the administration set tube, thereby reducing the fluid volume in each pumping cycle. As shown in FIG. 1, use of conventional pumping techniques causes an unacceptable change in the percent error of fluid volume pumped as the pumping duration increases.
Additionally, guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control suggest that an infusion pump should use the same administration set for no more than one week. Accordingly, infusion pump manufacturers provide pumps capable of accurately delivering the infusion fluid over a long duration (for example 72-96 hours). However, as discussed above, fatigue of the administration set results in significant error over time.
One solution to this decreased accuracy is to change administration sets more frequently. These frequent administration set changes, however, increase hospital costs by both increasing both physical resources consumed (i.e., more administration sets are used for each patient) and time required for patient care (i.e., a caregiver is required to spend more time with each patient due to more frequent administration set changes).
Another solution is to incorporate a feedback mechanism, such as a flow sensor, into the infusion pump. However, such a flow sensor would likely increase costs and be potentially difficult to integrate into the infusion pump. Moreover, conventional flow sensors generally lack the dynamic range and accuracy required to monitor infusion flow.
Accordingly, there is a need for increasing accuracy of medication delivery using infusion pumps and administration sets over a long duration without unduly increasing costs associated with medication delivery.